


Righteous Retribution

by Narci



Series: See the Forest, Not Just the Trees [5]
Category: Mo Dao Zu Shi, 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)
Genre: Angst, BAMF!Nhs, BAMF!WWX, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Sunshot Campaign aftermath, The inbetween years, cultivation world - freeform, other characters are mentioned tho, wwx being a badass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:49:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26527768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Narci/pseuds/Narci
Summary: Demons didn’t exist in their world. Not in the classic sense at least. Demonic monsters, ghouls, and corpses obviously cropped up regularly, but there were never any end-of-humanity level demonic threats. All well-educated cultivators heard stories about the days of immortals and high level demons in human form. All art and music students knew at least one verse of the Resentment of Chunshan by heart. Yet, demons weren’t prevalent in their time.The closest thing was the Yiling Patriarch, and even he’d been killed ten years ago.-/-character study of wwx by the cultivation world as a whole
Series: See the Forest, Not Just the Trees [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1915600
Comments: 12
Kudos: 110





	Righteous Retribution

The Jin Sect wasn’t known for their excellent cultivators despite essentially being the top cultivation sect. They were known for their money and numbers. That’s why very few families and clans would send their disciples to the Jin Sect for education or training. They’d send them for short periods to make connections, and that is all. However, even with their education not being the best, it should be at least decent so as to not dirty their reputation even more, so no one really questioned much of what the Jin Sect taught. 

Jin Sect Disciples were taught various things throughout their training, but one thing was drilled in more than anything else: the Yiling Patriarch was a demon in human disguise who could have destroyed the sect easily, who had murdered Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli, but was eventually killed by a large group of fearless cultivators ready to do whatever it would take to protect their families and clans. All of this happened more than ten years ago, but every Jin Disciple still knew of it, new and old.

Mo Xuanyu certainly heard those words more than once. He heard those words daily when he was living in Koi Tower. He heard those words, and the demonic cultivation manuals he found written by the Yiling Patriarch reinforced his image of a peerless evil. (It also made Mo Xuanyu pause because what did it say about him that these methods of demonic cultivation made far more sense than the Jin Sect’s useless prattling and sword forms?)

However, after being kicked out of Koi Tower and sent back to Mo Village, back to Mo Manor… the Yiling Patriarch was exactly who Mo Xuanyu was forced to rely on. Surely, someone strong enough to require the entire cultivation world to defeat him would be able to get his revenge for him? Yes, it would work. It had to. 

Even Sect Leader Nie believed it would.

Mo Xuanyu steeled himself and dug into the skin on his wrist. Once. Twice…

-/-

According to the world as a whole, Wei Wuxian was known only as the Yiling Patriarch. Inns told stories of how ugly, evil, and terrifyingly strong he was. All travelling storytellers knew at least three stories of his ‘evil deeds’. Smaller cultivation sects preached about never turning to the dark side lest a certain disciple end up like the Yiling Patriarch. Even the Jiang Sect was said to hunt down and torture Demonic Cultivators. Even the Lan Sect taught about the fearsome Yiling Patriarch (at least, Lan Qiren and the other elders did).

Strangely enough, the recently made cowardly Nie Sect was the only one not to demonize the Demonic Cultivator even further. They taught about the Yiling Patriarch, but it was always objective and relatively fair. The disciples of the Nie Clan knew that Wei Wuxian was a flawed man, especially near the end of his life, but they rarely forgot all the good he had done in addition to the bad.

And everyone knew how the Jin Sect acted, what they taught, but that wasn’t really a surprise given that the sect had been the staunchest supporter of ending the Yiling Patriarch's ‘reign of terror’ in the first place.

-/-

People are good and bad, never entirely one way or the other. Every cultivator that’s seen real war knows that. Every cultivator that lived through the Sunshot Campaign knows that. And yet, when it came to Wei Wuxian, everyone was quick to throw out words like demon, terror, dangerous. (That last one was true, but why would he be a danger to the general public? Why would he start killing innocents without a moment's notice? Was he not someone that used to be seen as a paragon of what young cultivators that didn’t have prominent bloodlines should aim to be?)

What was it about the Demonic Cultivator that made people so willing to turn on him? Perhaps it was the way he ignored what they wanted him to do. Perhaps it was the way he never bent under pressure. Perhaps it was all of those things or none of them. It didn’t really matter anymore. After all, the Yiling Patriarch was long dead. His death a form of retribution taken by a group of cultivators terrified of his power and nature. (Even if it wasn’t the cultivators who killed him in the end.) He wasn’t coming back.

...Was he?

-/-

“What if he’s not really dead? They never found a body, did they?”

“Of course he’s dead! If he wasn’t, we would still be living in fear!” 

-/-

“Wait! How do I count as an evil spirit? I never took revenge, I never killed senselessly, ahhhhhhh! Just too unfair.”

fin.

**Author's Note:**

> another short one... hahaha... anywho, i just wanted to get the shorter ones done while i work on the longer emotional ones like LWJ's and WN's. i hope this one isn't too disappointing, i still had fun writing it so... *kicks stone lightly with toe* 
> 
> if you want to see something in particular in this series, i am open to suggestions at this point. just leave a comment! 
> 
> thank you for reading! and lots of love, 
> 
> (^o^)/ <333333


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